Gender, Civil Society, and Participation: Introduction to the Special Issue of Social Politics

Abstract

��� The position of women in relation to civil society organizations has long been recognized as historically significant in most western welfare states. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when women were often denied full political citizenship, they were usually able to participate in what would then have usually been called voluntary organizations and are now more likely to be termed third sector organizations, or even civil society organizations. 1 The historical literature has been divided on how to interpret this work: as an important bridge to the public world of paid work and political action, as evidence of female solidarity (given that the organizations often worked on behalf of women and children), or as rather inadequate outlets for well-meaning middle class women, excluded from the public sphere (e.g. Lewis 1991; Skocpol 1992; Summers 1979)? The context for assessing participation in and the impact of the “third sector” is very different in the Winter 2007